“The hell did that come from?” Sean asked, leaning forward and pushing himself out of the metal gate that had bent inward when they had slammed into it. His burning orbs stared in confusion at the heavily scorched stones where a paladin had been bleeding out just moments before. “If he could hit that hard, why did he wait until all his friends were dead to do it?”
“Who cares about that, his body is gone!” Gel shouted, halfway between alarm and outrage. “The coward found a way to keep me from eating him! Quick, let’s eat the rest before they do it, too!”
“I don’t think the rest are doing anything. Pretty sure you have to be alive to sacrifice yourself.” Sean quipped, but he jogged over towards the nearest corpse regardless. He glanced back at the massive section of wall that the dying paladin’s hammer had caved in not ten feet from where they had been.
As power-ups go, that was damn impressive. His other hammer didn’t even score our armor, but that one definitely would have.
Sean was a little disappointed he hadn’t gotten a prompt from the attack. He would have liked to see the numbers the man had put up with his last breath, particularly because they had used ‘impact shell’ to try and defend against it– and he needed to know how well their best defensive ability had stacked up.
The crimson-black streaks of what looked like dark blood splattered all over the ground in front of the shattered wall however, made it easy to guess where their defense had rated.
“We’re going to have to watch out for more moves like that the next time we fight these guys.” Sean told his friend, right as a familiar heartbeat flew down from the sky towards them. “And tell Saren thanks for the save when he gets here. I also wouldn’t hate a little warning before being snatched up by a mini-tornado mid-fight next time. Assuming he has time, that is.”
“How about we save the talking for a time when our food isn’t considering burning itself right off our menu?” The slime sounded sincerely stressed, though apart from the battle – which had gone surprisingly well all things considered – Sean couldn’t tell why.
“Can’t you just put their bodies in the locket? They’re just meat now, right?”
Silence reigned for a moment, made all the more poignant by the lack of combat echoing through the streets as it had just seconds before.
“I–I hadn’t even considered that.” Gel admitted, sounding sheepish before his usual zeal returned. “You’re right, let’s do that. We can eat them later when Feathers isn’t around to get bothered by it.”
As if the owlen had heard their discussion, Saren landed next to them. The former paladin looked exhausted, and his heart rate was spiked almost as high as Sean had ever seen it. He began talking the instant he landed, a grave expression on his face as his head swiveled around in nearly every direction.
Uh oh. Sean thought, recognizing the tell-tale signs of someone tracking multiple incoming threats. That can’t be good.
“We must leave at once.” Saren said, Gel translating his words for Sean’s benefit. “The city guard is on their way, and with your appearance as it is they will no doubt attack you on sight. Can you resume your disguise?”
“Can we?” Sean asked his friend.
“Ehh, about that.”
“We can’t, can we?”
“I mean, we can.” Gel hedged. “But it has to be someone else. Remember how I said impersonate let me disguise us as someone we had eaten ‘recently’?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, apparently the shopkeeper no longer counts as ‘recent’. It’ll have to be someone else.”
“We haven’t eaten anyone else since him, have we?” Sean was pretty sure they hadn’t, so he nudged the nearest corpse with his foot. “What about this guy?”
“He’ll work famously.” Gel said brightly. “If we have the time to eat him before the guards get here, that is.”
Sean looked over at Saren, whose head was still doing an almost comical amount of swiveling while he gestured impatiently for them to follow him.
“Something tells me we don’t.” Sean said dryly, before leaning over and – with Gel’s help – absorbing the man’s body into their meat locket. The process was surprisingly smooth, but it also left an awkward pile of clothes and armor that crumpled in on itself into an all-too-human outline.
“Let’s get the rest, and then we’re gone.” Sean said, rushing over to repeat the process. “If the guards don’t find any bodies, maybe they won’t be so upset with us.”
“I like where your skull is at, but I doubt it.” In contrast to Saren’s increasingly stressed expression, the slime seemed almost chipper now that he was sure the remainder of their meals were coming with them. “Saren says the penalty for murdering more than three people is an automatic beheading.”
“An automatic beheading?” They had, however briefly, discussed what the slime knew of Dervash’s criminal justice system earlier. It wasn’t wholly medieval, but Sean had learned that capital punishment was apparently standard practice for what the city deemed ‘heinous’ crimes. “What about ten in self defense?”
Gel exchanged a few more words with the owlen, who quickly shook his head in a show of frustration before urging them again to hurry up.
“I don’t think you would like the answer.” Gel said, and Sean could only nod in response.
The second the final body was pulled into their locket, the trio took off down the street. It was none too soon, as Sean’s pulse sense picked up heartbeats pounding towards where they had just been as Saren led them down a cross street towards a district Sean was unfamiliar with. Each house they passed was closer to its neighbor than the last, and eventually alleyways began to appear between them. Alleyways the citizens around them immediately began screaming and ducking into the second they caught sight of Sean.
This isn’t going to work. Sean realized after the third shrieking woman dropped her groceries and began shouting for what he could only assume were the guards following them. Guards Sean hadn’t yet glimpsed, but from the way Saren’s head kept twitching to track their pursuers the geladin could tell they hadn’t given up yet. And they never will if we can’t get another disguise on.
A sudden mixed bag of emotions flowed into him through his bond with the slime, and Sean stumbled as he ran. Abruptly, the environment around him began to shift in a way that the geladin had only seen once before. Back at the small village of Dry Run, the first time they had encountered it.
Oh no, not now. Sean thought, as spectral men and women from the past began to fill his vision. Gel groaned in discomfort, and the number of ghostly images increased. They filled the street in a thick crowd to the point where if it weren’t for his pulse sense the geladin would have barrelled right into someone. He couldn’t see Saren with his eyes anymore, there were simply too many people. Too many dead people? No, this isn’t Dry Run. Most of these people are probably still alive.
Thankfully, the buildings themselves didn’t seem to have changed much– so Sean oriented himself on them. He dashed past a couple laughing as they threw their child into the air, past a guard shouting at someone he had just seen, past a small form ducking down a nearby alley.
“That way!” Gel suddenly shouted in his mind, and through their bond Sean could feel the slime’s sudden surety. “Go back, after Chari– after that kid!”
Sean skidded to a halt, then turned around and ran back towards the alley Gel had indicated. The ghosts from the slime’s memories all around him were so thick around him that Sean almost tried to shove some of them out of his way. Incorporeal or not, real or not, it was disorienting running through someone else– much less this many all at once. Like running headlong at a wall only to find out it wasn’t even there on the other end.
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Gel shouted out loud this time, presumably telling Saren to follow them, but Sean didn’t waste time asking for a translation. He just trusted his friend.
“Where to now?” He asked, ignoring another shrieking citizen who abruptly decided that this alleyway had too many undead in it for her liking. She ran away, and the geladin’s sharp orbs picked out that same small, spectral form from before running right next to her.
If we chase that poor woman, she’s going to have a heart attack.
Sure enough, Gel said exactly what Sean had expected him to.
“After that kid!” The slime called, though his voice this time sounded distant. The same way it usually did when Gel was sorting through memories.
“Is he important?” Sean asked, not even hesitating to raise the fleeing woman’s panic level up several notches as he sprinted in her direction. “She? Why are we–”
“Yes, well– no. But she’s headed somewhere we could use.”
“Somewhere to hide?”
“I think so, there’s just a lot of–” The slime groaned again. “Hrnghh– overlap. She was chased a lot, and all over these streets. I’m trying to–”
As they neared an intersection of multiple streets, the small form in front of them suddenly split into a dozen versions of herself, each sprinting in a different direction. Sean stopped, and the woman who he had been ‘chasing’ scrambled over a nearby wall alongside one of the ghostly images of the girl– though with decidedly more panic and far less grace.
I really hope that’s not the one we’re–
“That one!” Gel said sharply, and the dozen images of the small ghost suddenly snapped into one. To Sean’s relief, it wasn’t the one who had all-but-leapt over the wall. Instead, the one Gel was now gesturing towards with a none-too-subtle tug of Sean’s hand simply ran past a shelf holding rather prickly-looking cacti, then dashed–
– right through the wall in front of her.
Sean gaped, his jaw dropping at the sight. No hole had opened up. There hadn’t been so much as a ripple as the girl passed through what looked for all the world like solid stone.
Some kind of illusion?
“Tap the one with the flower in the center there, and then head into that wall– and hurry, because Saren says they’re right behind us.” Gel instructed, and once again the geladin didn’t hesitate. “Poke it right underneath that big spike. That’s the trigger..”
“Trigger for what?” Sean couldn’t help but ask as he poked the flowering cactus where Gel had indicated. Nothing happened, but the slime tugged him towards the wall again. Behind him, Sean could feel fear begin to speed the owlen’s heart rate.
“The doorway, now hurry! I already told Feathers to follow us, and it’s designed to close on its own so we gotta move!”
With a small shake of his head, Sean ran at the stone wall the small ghost had passed through. It wasn’t like the movies, and in retrospect running through the ghosts out on the street had been nothing like this– the geladin gritted his teeth and winced as the wall drew rapidly closer.
The lack of impact wrong-footed him, even though Sean had hoped it wasn’t coming. The other end of the wall held a small room with a nondescript bed, a wash bin, a crude-looking dresser, and that same small ghost sitting stone-still on the bed while one hand twirled a wickedly sharp dagger.
Stumbling to the side of the room opposite the armed ghost, Sean shook himself. Saren stumbled in only a second later, but the geladin’s gaze was locked on the spectral figure sitting on the bed. It wasn’t a human, as he had first suspected. Or even a lizardkin, which appeared to be the second largest demographic in Dervash.
It was a fennekian.
Large, fuzzy ears poked out from the ghost’s cloak and she looked like she was listening for something. Saren exclaimed in soft surprise as he looked around the room, but both Sean and Gel ignored him. The figure on the bed nodded to herself after a moment, nodded to another ghost – who Sean was surprised to find was standing right where he was – then flung her dagger across the room. It sank nearly hilt-deep into a hollowed-out section of the room’s wooden wall right next to Sean’s head, and then both of the ghosts disappeared.
Gel gasped as if coming up for air.
“You alright?” Sean asked, glad they had somewhere to hide now but concerned about the mental toll all those memories had obviously taken on his friend. “Need a second?”
“There’s a whole other village here.” Gel said, sounding shocked. “I didn’t, I mean, they’re right here. Living inside the walls of the city and hiding their homes inside everyone else’s.”
“Who is?” Sean asked, going for the most pertinent of his now many questions.
“The fennekians. The fuzzy little morsels are everywhere, and I didn’t know!” Gel exclaimed, before his voice took on a hint of surprise. “Oh. Hmm. We… may be in a bit of trouble. Oops.”
Sean did not like that ‘oops’. “What do you mean oops? And how do you know all this? You’ve never eaten a fennekian.”
“True.” Gel said, in a tone that sounded like that fact was one of his greatest regrets. “But I did eat Cultivar’s assistants, and it turns out one of them was an informant for the city guards. Was raised by them, actually. Why would they– oh, he was an orphan.”
“You’re telling me we ate the adopted orphan informant of the city guard.” Sean said, scarcely able to believe his own words. “And you just had us run into a secret hideaway those very same guards use to escape unwanted attention.”
“Yes, and yes.” Gel affirmed.
“... What are the odds the ones chasing us don’t know about or check this spot?” Sean asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Slim to none.”
“And the disguise we could have had as that very same informant for the guard isn’t an option for your impersonate ability, because we took too long to actually use it.”
“That is correct.”
Sean resisted the urge to put his face in his hands, though it was a near thing.
“Alright, then let’s pop one of those paladins out, get you a free meal and give us a fresh disguise we can use before any of those guards come looking. We might be able to talk our way out of this with Saren’s help, but I doubt any of those little fuzzballs are going to take kindly to me looming over them like their last nightmare.”
“Well now hear me out.” Gel said quickly. “What if we just eat whichever ones come to look? It probably won’t be all of them, and then I can finally–”
“We’re not eating the city guards, Gel.” Sean said firmly. “We’re trying to avoid unwanted attention by the authorities, not give them even more reason to come chasing after us.”
“Fine.” Gel grumbled, just as Saren’s head suddenly swiveled towards the fake-wall entrance to their little hiding spot.
Sean didn’t even bother with words or a sigh at the inevitability of it all, he simply raised the edge of his crimson-black axe towards the illusory doorway.
“That’s the spirit!” Gel said brightly. “Now, see if you can leave the first one mostly intact. I want to–”
“I know several recipes that–” The Oomnomicon chimed in, but Sean quickly shushed them both.
“Not right now, you two. Again. The goal is not to fight if we can help it.” Sean reminded his friend. “So you’re on translation duty the second anyone comes through that door.”
“Fine.” Gel huffed, a little more indignantly this time though Sean could tell the slime was just playing it up. Gel didn’t want to be chased out of Dervash and away from its wide array of exotic meats any more than he did. “What do you want me to say when they come in and see you ready to chop them down? If you don’t want to fight, you’re sending a lot of mixed signals right now.”
Saren indicated the doorway in a clear ‘someone’s coming’ manner, and Sean reluctantly set his axe down as softly as he could manage. Gel had a point, he had just been in self-defense mode again. Unsurprising given they had been attacked recently, but unproductive if he wanted to avoid another.
“Just tell whoever it is that we can explain.” Sean said, doing his best to assume what he hoped would be a non-threatening posture. “Then we’ll just… take it from there.”
“Ooh, improv. I like it, great plan.”
Sean detected no sarcasm from his friend, but he did detect the heartbeat of a small creature running swiftly down the street towards their position. He saw its network of enticing veins stop briefly before the cactus, and for a moment thought that he recognized this particular heart. All hearts were different in subtle ways in his experience, and this one felt… familiar. Sean just couldn’t place where he had seen it before.
At least until its owner walked into the room, and for the first time since that would-be beacon-woman had lit up in the streets, Sean felt like things just might turn out alright.
“I still say we should eat him.”